The ARLC must tackle wrestling in NRL

[Cerne Abbas Giant]

http://www.news.com.au/sport/nrl/the-arlc-must-tackle-wrestling-in-nrl/story-fndujljl-1226489456158

I can understand that Paul Kent wants to see more footy. But I have to disagree with his assertion that a team that is good at wrestling does well in the competition. You're not going to win games doing more head locks, chicken wings and the like. A team that has a better defensive structure and strategy will. One of the main reasons why Melbourne won the comp because they nullified the Dog's ball playing forwards early.

Players are stronger and a lot faster today. They have the ability to break out of tackles easy. Hence why more effort is required to bring them down. The only way to eliminiate so called "wrestling" is for the player being tackled to surrender early like touch rugby. That way, you don't need 3 to 4 players in the tackle to pin him down.

 

[WayneBennett]

tackle...wresling...i see what they did there

 

[El Diablo]

Paul Kent can piss off

he's an AFL stooge now

 

[bluey]

The wrestling has to be Halved at least its getting like the game was better 10 years ago because of it and you will get to see more Tries

 

[Stagger Lee]

I But I have to disagree with his assertion that a team that is good at wrestling does well in the competition. You're not going to win games doing more head locks, chicken wings and the like. A team that has a better defensive structure and strategy will. One of the main reasons why Melbourne won the comp because they nullified the Dog's ball playing forwards early.

A team that is good at wrestling does well in the competition because it buys them time to form a better defensive structure. Melbourne won the comp because they nullified the Dog's ball playing forwards early by bringing the ultimate wrestling game to the final.

I agree with Kent and from reading your post Cerne Abbas I think you do too

 

[docbrown]

Modify the 40-20 rule to become a general 40 metre kick advantage rule out of your own half, i.e.

10-50
20-40
30-30
40-20
50-10

This forces defending teams to drop two players back to cover the sidelines whenever an attacking team is playing out of their own half. This creates a 13 on 10-11 attacking advantage in that half. Attacking teams would be more encouraged to shift the ball around in their own half to exploit the advantage and defenders would be less inclined to gang tackle to avoid locking up 3-4 defenders in one position which opens up the field elsewhere.

 

[Stagger Lee]

I agree with Docbrown 40-20 rule change

I would also look at the way the defence slows the game up by holding the player upright. When all genuine forward momentum is lost and the ball is locked up with no attempts to offload then the refs have to call 'tackled' straight away - not wait for the player to be slowly lowered to the ground with a defender on top while the rest of the defence resets.

 

[southwalesrabbitoh]

Not for me that Doc.

Reduce interchanges to 8 and have the defensive line back 12 metres from play-the-ball but it's usually this in any case in the NRL, but more significantly ensure that the markers are square and that the defence can't move until the ball HAS CLEARED THE RUCK. I don't want to make it too easy to score, I detest seeing scorlines like 36-32. I want to see some wrestling, it seems as if I'm in a huge minority though.

The only other thing you could try is reducing the sport to 12-a-side.

 

[southwalesrabbitoh]

Stagger,

We'll have loads more running from acting-half then, so no, there's enough running from there now. There's nothing much wrong with the game, it's the best on the planet. Paul Kent is obviously of a childish nature to prefer AFL. AFL sometimes looks like a bunch of 10 year olds on the schoolyard.

 

[Phil McGrawhan]

All that needs to be done is refs to called "Tackled ,get off him".
Give them about 3-4 secs to let him go & if not penalise the defenders.
Referees could clear the ruck up easily if they enforced the holding down/wrestling moves

 

[GAZF]

The only other thing you could try is reducing the sport to 12-a-side.

Are you sure you're a league fan? All you post about is making it unrecognisable.

Modify the 40-20 rule to become a general 40 metre kick advantage rule out of your own half, i.e.

10-50
20-40
30-30
40-20
50-10

This forces defending teams to drop two players back to cover the sidelines whenever an attacking team is playing out of their own half. This creates a 13 on 10-11 attacking advantage in that half. Attacking teams would be more encouraged to shift the ball around in their own half to exploit the advantage and defenders would be less inclined to gang tackle to avoid locking up 3-4 defenders in one position which opens up the field elsewhere.

Would encourage more kicking early in the set as well.

 

[Stagger Lee]

Reduce interchanges to 8

This is a must rule change for next year.

 

[adamkungl]

At least this article is less geniused than his article last week, in which he had a tantrum because Melbourne played perfectly and never gave the Bulldogs a chance. Really starting to dislike Kent.

For too long the game's hierarchy has refused to acknowledge the game is slowing down, partly because they don't know how to fix it once they do admit it.

Unfortunately, in his long winded whinge, Kent hasn't provided a single suggestion either.

Not surprising, since he's missed the point entirely.

Wrestling is *not* the issue. Every coach ever has told their team to slow down the play the ball as much as possible until the ref penalises it, or else they aren't doing their job.

The first step is the 'wrestle' - simply making sure the player is on their back so it takes them longer to play the ball. As long as there aren't headlocks or similar, this is NOT a problem, it is not an exploitation of the rules, it is not a scummy tactic, it's common f**king sense. Any attempts to remove wrestling would be absurd, forced, and strongly change the fabric of the game.

The second step is lying on the tackled player, and this is what can be changed. As Phil McGrawhan said a few posts up, the refs simply need to cut down the time players can hold down the tackled player, rather than try to change the way players are tackling.

Remove the 'dominant tackle' rubbish. Players have the same amount of time to clear the ruck whether there's one in the tackle or 4. The consequence of this is teams will have to be smarter about gang tackling, if they don't have time to get off, they will be penalised. If they have too many players in who don't get off quick enough, the defensive line will be missing 2-3 blokes.

However - Personally I don't have an issue with the speed of the game. Fulton's claims of 8 second play the balls were excessively exaggerated. The game has changed in the last 20 years, yes, and it's of course arguable whether it's for the better. But speed of the ruck isn't the only change, attacking and defensive tactics have both changed, contest for posession has changed, player sizes have changed. If you quick fix one thing - like ruck speed - the consequences won't be as simple as making the game faster. Chances are we'll see more dummy half running as the attack just rolls downfield as fast as possible, like touch footy.

I've always preferred the idea of lowering interchanges further, giving the little men more room to move late in the game. Whether this would be effective is up in the air though... it might have the opposite effect and lead to more 80 minute 'athletes' and less footballers.

 

[whall15]

Modify the 40-20 rule to become a general 40 metre kick advantage rule out of your own half, i.e.

10-50
20-40
30-30
40-20
50-10

This forces defending teams to drop two players back to cover the sidelines whenever an attacking team is playing out of their own half. This creates a 13 on 10-11 attacking advantage in that half. Attacking teams would be more encouraged to shift the ball around in their own half to exploit the advantage and defenders would be less inclined to gang tackle to avoid locking up 3-4 defenders in one position which opens up the field elsewhere.

Yeah, I agree with this.

 

[POPEYE]

At least this article is less geniused than his article last week, in which he had a tantrum because Melbourne played perfectly and never gave the Bulldogs a chance. Really starting to dislike Kent.



Unfortunately, in his long winded whinge, Kent hasn't provided a single suggestion either.

Not surprising, since he's missed the point entirely.

Wrestling is *not* the issue. Every coach ever has told their team to slow down the play the ball as much as possible until the ref penalises it, or else they aren't doing their job.

The first step is the 'wrestle' - simply making sure the player is on their back so it takes them longer to play the ball. As long as there aren't headlocks or similar, this is NOT a problem, it is not an exploitation of the rules, it is not a scummy tactic, it's common f**king sense. Any attempts to remove wrestling would be absurd, forced, and strongly change the fabric of the game.

The second step is lying on the tackled player, and this is what can be changed. As Phil McGrawhan said a few posts up, the refs simply need to cut down the time players can hold down the tackled player, rather than try to change the way players are tackling.

Remove the 'dominant tackle' rubbish. Players have the same amount of time to clear the ruck whether there's one in the tackle or 4. The consequence of this is teams will have to be smarter about gang tackling, if they don't have time to get off, they will be penalised. If they have too many players in who don't get off quick enough, the defensive line will be missing 2-3 blokes.

However - Personally I don't have an issue with the speed of the game. Fulton's claims of 8 second play the balls were excessively exaggerated. The game has changed in the last 20 years, yes, and it's of course arguable whether it's for the better. But speed of the ruck isn't the only change, attacking and defensive tactics have both changed, contest for posession has changed, player sizes have changed. If you quick fix one thing - like ruck speed - the consequences won't be as simple as making the game faster. Chances are we'll see more dummy half running as the attack just rolls downfield as fast as possible, like touch footy.

I've always preferred the idea of lowering interchanges further, giving the little men more room to move late in the game. Whether this would be effective is up in the air though... it might have the opposite effect and lead to more 80 minute 'athletes' and less footballers.

Well said . . . all comes back to the referees practicising a count to 3, and knowing when to start the count.

 

[Iafeta]

All that needs to be done is refs to called "Tackled ,get off him".
Give them about 3-4 secs to let him go & if not penalise the defenders.
Referees could clear the ruck up easily if they enforced the holding down/wrestling moves

Overall I agree with that. Wrestling is in the game to slow down the ruck, to give defenders a chance to get square at marker, and get their team back onside and set. Referees just need to get stricter on the speed of the ruck. If its a good dominant tackle and they've tackled the guy onto his back, so be it. Slow it down. But if its anything other, once tackle or held is called, the defenders should start peeling off. If they're doing anything other than that, penalise them.

 

[Dragonwest]

Not for me that Doc.

Reduce interchanges to 8 and have the defensive line back 12 metres from play-the-ball but it's usually this in any case in the NRL, but more significantly ensure that the markers are square and that the defence can't move until the ball HAS CLEARED THE RUCK. I don't want to make it too easy to score, I detest seeing scorlines like 36-32. I want to see some wrestling, it seems as if I'm in a huge minority though.

The only other thing you could try is reducing the sport to 12-a-side.

Having players back a generous ten metres is part of the problem. The further players have to retreat the greater the importance of the wrestle.

 

[Meapro Ham]

Wrestling is cool. People need to relax and enjoy the skill involved instead of complaining.

I would like to see an increase in the amount of wrestling. They should change the rule so there is no time limit to the amount of time a player can be held down. In fact the onus should be on the tackled player to get up. If he can't get up within say 10 minutes then a penalty goes to the defending side. There would only be about 8 or so tackles per game and we would get to enjoy lots more wrestling.

 

[papabear]

lol, imo all thats needed is good consistent reffing, if the guy isn't put on his back with the initial hit but they roll him onto his back to slow it down ping the player.

If the player doesn't get off when the ref calls held, ping them don't tell them to get off.

Most importantly, ping the attacking player if he is being a dirty f**ker and holding onto the defender playing for a penalty, in fact ping him and send him to the bin.

 

[gerg]

I posted this on another forum a week ago.

I follow rugby league not wrestling. The NRL needs to grow a pair and clean the ruck up. It is the biggest blight on the game and has been the past ten years.

I'd like to see the referees initiate some sort of system where they call "held ... held ... held" for every single tackle and if the defender has not cleared the ruck area by the time he has finished saying "held" the third time it is an instant penalty. This would at least clear up one grey area of the game that some teams gain advantage from and other sides inexplicably don't. The penalty should be called if the attacker is in any way impeded in his attempt to play the ball. It has to be the defenders responsibility to get the hell out of the ruck area. Forget the dominant and submission tackle call - it is too open to interpretation and regardless of the type of tackle it should be the same time limit for every tackle. The game was changed to a 10 metre rule to open it up more to the ball players and make the game more entertaining. Coaches have worked it out - it is time for the rule makers to get back ahead of the game.

The commentators always crap on about the wonderful players in our game like Barba, Slater, Bowen, Inglis and Hayne but there is the potential for even more of them showing their brilliant skills if they would just get rid of this wrestling. These days it isn't just the wrestling - the defenders also obstruct the dummy half regularly instead of rolling away and get away with it.